In the US government's campaign against journalists, Barret Brown is one of the lesser-known victims. And now even less will be forthcoming about his story, as the Texas-based writer, satirist and Internet activist is under a federal court gag order, forbidden to talk about his case.

Which account of the mass deaths in Syria should be given more credence: the U.S. government version introduced by Secretary of State John Kerry, or the article published by the Minnesota-based news site Mint Press? The government account expresses "high confidence that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack." The Mint report bore the headline "Syrians in Ghouta Claim Saudi-Supplied Rebels Behind Chemical Attack."

What does Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos have in store for the Washington Post? No one can say for sure, but we can say that when Amazon didn't like what WikiLeaks was publishing it shut down access to the site.

The government isn't having much luck showing the real world harm done by Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks. Perhaps they should call in Time columnist Joe Klein–he knows "for a fact" that bad things happened.

Covering the Manning verdict on NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams said that Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski had "covered this story from the start." But you'd have a hard time believing that when you heard the way he described one of the most talked-about aspects of the trial.

The New York Times reports that Wikileaks' "journalistic reputation was…undercut by two prominent articles published by the New York Times." But if anyone's journalistic reputation was hurt by those articles, it was the Times'.

To Washington Post columnist Walter Pincus, something about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden just doesn't smell right. Lucky for him he gets space in a prestigious newspaper to work out his hunch–apparently without any editors or factcheckers to get in his way.

What Tim Dickinson called Hastings' "enthusiastic breaches of the conventions of access journalism" were what enabled him to report the unguarded assessments of the officers running the occupation of Afghanistan.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo (6/11/13) wrote about Edward Snowden yesterday in a way that helped make it clear why so many in the press seem upset that the former NSA consultant revealed the extent of U.S. spying programs aimed at the American public. "I'm a journalist," Marshall wrote. And back when I did national security reporting I tried to get leaks. So I don't think leaks are always wrong…. In fact, leaks are an absolutely critical safety valve against government wrongdoing and/or excessive secrecy. But officials who leak classified information are "breaking an oath and committing a crime," […]

Last week on CounterSpin, we spoke with scholar and media historian Bob McChesney about his new book Digital Disconnect. His closing thoughts seems especially relevant in light of the blockbuster reporting this week from the Guardian and Washington Post.

NBC's Brian Williams called Bradley Manning "the man who may have put U.S. military secrets in the hands of Osama bin Laden." But giving classified information to the public is something that news outlets–including NBC News–routinely do, and each time they do it they too could be accused of "aiding the enemy."

If you care at all about war and peace, press freedom, whistleblowers' rights and the public's right to know what the government is doing, the trial of Bradley Manning is of enormous consequence. It would have been hard for NBC News to come up with a more hostile framing.